Exploring the Impact of Decentralization on Public Service Delivery in Pakistan, with a Focus on Local Governance

Abstract

Though various decentralization reforms have been adopted in Pakistan, such as the historic Devolution Plan 2001 and the introduction of subsequent constitutional reforms like the 18 th Amendment, there are still great challenges in the way of local delivery of the public services. Although decentralization has its theoretical advantages in terms of efficiency, accountability, and responsiveness, which are expected to be brought about by empowering the local governments, the empirical evidence has indicated that the intended advantages have not been equally distributed among the provinces or sectors. The Research Objectives of the study are: To investigate how the reforms in decentralization as they were enforced in 2001 through the Devolution Plan and other governance programs have affected the quality, accessibility and efficiency of local government delivery of the public services in Pakistan. To establish and determine the administrative, fiscal and political conditions that enable or prevent the efficient local government performance in delivering decentralized administrative services in various provinces and urban-rural settings. To determine the importance of citizen participation and community involvement in determining the effectiveness and outcome of the decentralized governance in enhancing the provision of public services in the local government institutions. The qualitative research design used in this study was to investigate the effects of the decentralization in the delivery of local public services in Pakistan with respect to local governance systems. To obtain detailed information about the practices of institutions, policy execution, and experiences of the stakeholders, the qualitative approaches were employed. The research population was 8-10 local government officers, policy makers, administrative officers and community people who were either directly involved or directly affected by the decentralization process in Pakistan. Semistructured interviews were used to gather data and data analysis has been done using document. Thematic analysis was used to find out patterns, categories and themes of the qualitative data. It complied with ethical principles in the course of the study. The participants were aware of the aim of the study and were asked to give permission to participate in the research prior to the actual collection of the data.